Shaheen Ad Linking Brown to 'Big Oil' Blasted for Hypocrisy

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is accusing her GOP opponent Scott Brown of having ties to “Big Oil” while she invests in energy companies herself, according to The Weekly Standard.

Shaheen has just released a 30-second campaign ad claiming that while he was a senator in Massachusetts, Brown voted against legislation that would have prevented oil companies from receiving “$20 billion in taxpayer subsidies.”

“Big Oil gave Scott Brown thousands of dollars within days of his votes," the voiceover says on the commercial.

Brown voted in 2011 and 2012 against bills that would have ended tax subsidies for energy exploration, said the Standard, while also noting that nearly all Senate Republicans and even some Democrats also voted against them.

But Shaheen invests in some of the same oil companies her ad decries as "Big Oil," the Standard’s Michael Warren wrote, citing her 2013 financial disclosure forms.

Shaheen reported that her husband has a $100,000 investment in a mutual fund called Thornburg Value R5, which has a portfolio that includes some oil and gas companies, including Chevron, Inpex Weatherford International, and a French energy corporation called Total SA.

Total was charged by American and French authorities last year in an "international bribery scheme" related to the company's attempts to enter the Iranian oil market, the Standard said.

After Total admitted it bribed an Iranian official for access to oil fields in that country, the company agreed to pay over $245 million in fines to the U.S. government, according to the report.

Brown had been heavily trailing Shaheen for several months in the polls ahead of the November elections.

But since he recently stepped up his attacks on President Barack Obama’s immigration policies and her closeness to the White House, the gap has narrowed considerably, to the point where one recent poll had Shaheen ahead by only 2 points, the Standard said.